The
pre-design process for SSM Health Care's new hospital started in
earnest last month with a two-day session at the Knight Center on the
Washington University campus. The learning lab brought together 13
national authorities in health care design with members of the SSM
design team, patients, physicians and staff. Participants shared
stories about health care experiences and imagined ideal healing
environments. They burned through a peck of multicolored sticky notes
during brainstorming and rapid-design sessions. SSM was hoping to
discern general themes, not blueprint specifications. Its goal was to
develop touchstones for the design process.

IDEO,
an international design consultancy that helps companies innovate, was
tapped to lead the meeting by Robert Porter, the SSM executive
overseeing the project. He first enlisted IDEO's help in spring
2001 to redesign a medical and surgical unit at SSM DePaul Health
Center, where he was then president. The IDE* team shadowed patients
and toured the hospital by wheelchair. They dispatched hospital staff
with disposable cameras to chronicle the bottlenecks and staff
work-arounds. They interviewed patients and learned, not surprisingly,
that many view the hospital from a reclining position. More than one
patient interviewed had passed time counting ceiling tiles. Designers
addressed the visual boredom by putting nature motifs into the ceilings
of rooms and corridors.

A
super-sized dry erase board replaced a more modest surface used for
orienting information such as the names of caregivers and dates. Now,
visitors are encouraged to turn the wall into a giant greeting card. IDEO's
process led to the creation of nursing pods, or mini-stations, that
offer line-of-sight proximity to five or six patient rooms. The old
design clustered nurses at two large stations. Another innovation was a
pager system carried by the nurses to improve call light response
times. Patients relate call-light response to effective pain management
and overall care quality. DePaul has since wired the unit's call
buttons to portable phones that put nurses in instant voice contact
with patients. Peter Coughlan, IDEO's master of ceremonies at
the learning lab, said exercises, which included a speed dating warm-up
and rapid prototyping, were intended to emotionally engage participants
and get their creative juices flowing. A patient's perspective When
participants at the learning lab were invited to share stories about
patient experiences, Donna Looser, 39, of Mehlville, contrasted her
daughter's and son's surgeries at St. Louis Children's Hospital. The
procedures corrected congenital finger webbing. Isaac, her infant son,
underwent surgery earlier this year. The family got an orientation call
telling them where to park and whom to see when they arrived. They met
the entire surgical team ahead of the procedure. "They connected with
us as people," Looser said. "I could look at the doctor who was going
to put him to sleep. When he went to the operating room, he left in
someone's arms. I knew he wouldn't be in someone's arms in the OR, but
I wanted to feel like he was being cared for as though he was being
held, and he was." Every hour Isaac was in surgery, the family got an
update from the operating room. Looser contrasted the experience with
her angst when her then-infant daughter Callie underwent a similar
procedure in 2003. The family went four hours with no information from
the operating room. "That made us nuts," Looser said. "Then the
same-day surgery department closed down and they left us sitting there
in a dark room without knowing where our kid was and we couldn't find
anybody to find her. We were afraid she had died." Callie had been
admitted because outpatient recovery was shuttered for the night. She
shared a room with a 10-year-old boy who was unhappy to have a crying
baby keeping him awake, Looser said. Dr. Jeanne Huddleston, medical
director of the Mayo Clinic and president of the Society of Hospital
Medicine, also shared an experience. When she was 19 and a patient, her
doctor made a lasting impact by sitting down next to her bed, taking
her hand and looking her in the eye while he discussed her condition,
she said. "When I see patients now, and when I'm teaching residents to
see patients, I hit the up button on the bed. I bring the patients into
the conversation. The patient is a person, not a thing," Huddleston
said. Huddleston said most hospitals are not healing environments.
Patients are exhausted, disoriented and fearful, she said, with little
control over their environment or schedule. She believes facility
design must encourage rest, healing and safety. Thoughtful layout can
allow nurses and doctors to focus on one task at a time with limited
error-promoting distractions, she said. Putting tools and supplies at
or near patient beds can free up "touch time" -- the opportunity for
caring conversations between staff and patients. De-stressing the staff
Mark Renken, an administrator at SSM St. Louis, said most patients
relate positive hospital experiences to an employee's act of caring.
Realizing this, he assessed the areas SSM sets aside for staff. "The
lounges are small, the chairs are plastic. We ask them to provide
exceptional care and what do we provide for them?" Renken asked.
Comfortable break spaces and walking trails at the new facility can
help staff cope with stress, but only if there is time to use them.
Porter said SSM wants to make sure its process and facilities design
makes the time and creates a variety of spaces where staff can take
care of themselves. Some people need quiet to relax, others crave
action and distraction. Kurt G. Spiering is a principal architect in
the Milwaukee office of Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, the firm working
with Mackey Mitchell Associates of St. Louis to design the Fenton
medical campus. Spiering said on-site amenities such as gardens,
workout rooms and spa services can help staff stay energized. "That is
the kind of person I want treating me -- someone as fresh on the fifth
day of work as they were on the first," he said. -- Guideposts for
SSM's Fenton hospital Themes that emerged from SSM Health Care's
learning lab will be guideposts in the design of its Fenton hospital.
SSM wants a facility that is: * Organized around the patient's
experience and needs. * Conveniently laid out for ease of access. *
Supportive of the human dimension of healing by fostering connections
between patients and staff and ministering to the needs of families. *
Encouraging of the well-being of patient, staff and physician in an
environment that supports teamwork and promotes healthy lifestyles.

LOOSER
FAMILY PHOT* - Isaac Looser had surgery earlier this year at St. Louis
Children's Hospital. His mother, Donna, related the positive experience
her family had there during the learning lab for the new SSM facility.